* February 14th Anniversary

Today is not only a day to celebrate the love we have for those closest to us. It is also an anniversary of an event that changed my thinking about the world I live in.

February 14th is the anniversary of the first photograph of the earth taken from outer space. This was the beginning of a whole new cosmic reality and appreciation of our planet and where we are in a much greater reality than we thought!

Through the observations of Carl Sagan we started to see a new frontier beyond the earth. We saw that we are a part of something more – and that we are a part of a cosmos interwoven with divinity.

When I saw this little blue dot, my thinking shifted about how I saw myself and the world.

Oh boy! I am not the center and commander of the universe! I am in fact very insignificant.

What I thought mattered to me in my world … became redundant and irrelevant in the reality of the cosmos.

Who knew?… I certainly didn’t learn this from my parents.. or from my teacher Miss Douglas in high school!

So please take just a few moments to join with me to embrace and appreciate our pale blue drop… and commit to breathing life into it, preserving it, informing others, and coming together to meet the challenges that we all face to preserve it for the future.

We may appear to be insignificant, but I believe that each of us can make a difference in our own local sphere!

About Val Boyko

Val Boyko is originally from Scotland and came to the United States over 25 years ago.
At "Find Your Middle Ground" Val brings together her experience as a life coach, yoga teacher and mentor, to inspire awakening to the light and inspiration within us all.
This blog is a place of exploration and discovery as we all explore finding harmony and peace, in the highs and lows of life 💛

I’m going to be honest, Val. These kind of images do two things to me. Firstly, they cause awe and wonder and give me an enormous sense of mystery, beauty and egolessness (if there’s such a word). On the other hand, and this is the second thing, the nihilist in me says, what the hell is it all about then. To talk about making a difference in such vastness and enormity sounds ludicrous. But the puniness in me says, there must be something behind it all, not because I want to selfishly preserve myself, but because it all somehow speaks of Presence both in its smallness and vastness.

Thank you Don for sharing your thoughts here.
Yet, as we acknowledge our struggling thoughts, we see that it is just our thinking trying to make sense of something that is beyond us all.
I love “Presence both in its smallness and vastness”!

I think the sad thing for me Val is that faith traditionally has always been linked to, or defined by certainty, no room for doubt and mystery.. In many religious circles, not all of them, faith can only be faith when its object is fully known and believed in. This kind of faith is simply belief in an idle. So I really go with you when you speak of faith in that which is not fully known. The word faith though has difficulties for me because of all the connotations attached to it.I think of it in other ways, but forgive me, I’m getting a little carried away here, so let me stop.

I love this video. I think realizing our smallness is what helps us to realize our actual grandness. Like Carl said, earth is the only home known to have life. Humans are not only life, but are thinking, reasoning and inventive sentient beings. That makes this small blue dot a rather large thing. And those who live on it and are aware of themselves, even bigger than the small blue dot. WOW! I love the complexity of existence. Thanks Val, for sharing.

I think realizing the small of smallness helps one to realize your actual grandness. Like Carl Sagan said, earth is the only home known to support life. Humans are not only life, but are thinking, reasoning, inventive, and amazing sentient beings.

That makes this small blue dot a rather large thing. It also makes us humans who live on it even bigger than the small blue dot.